Thursday, November 15, 2018

Review - Speak Easily

November 15, 2018

Speak
Easily – U.S., 1932

Thank goodness for Jimmy Durante. This is,
of course, an odd way to begin a review of a Buster Keaton movie, but bear this
in mind, it is a review of a late Buster Keaton movie, and as fans of his are
likely well aware of, his later films were not kind to him. In Edward Sedgwick's Speak Easily, he plays a college
professor named Potts (Buster Keaton) who mistakenly believes he has inherited
a sizable fortune. The motivation for this deception is this: to teach him how
to live, a sentiment that sounds downright noble until you realize that the
deception could thrust him into bankruptcy. Eventually, the professor agrees to
produce a show on Broadway with his non-existent wealth.

But back to Durante. The multi-talented performer
had all the credentials to play James, the head of a traveling revue show, from
his superb skills on the piano to his particularly gruff voice. He also had the
kind of infectious energy normally seen in someone who’s taken Vivarin and is now
on his seventh cup of coffee. He is virtually bouncing off of walls in every
scene. His appearance immediately lifts ever scene he is in, and even when the
plot fails him, which it frequently does, he carries on as if nothing matters.
The camera is rolling, and he is on!

I wish I could say the same for the rest of
the cast. I don’t mean to imply that their performances are awful. Rather, they
are failed by an inconsistent and scattershot script. In one glaring example of
the script’s incompetence, a Broadway producer (who shares an uncanny
resemblance with Orson Welles) loudly declares Jimmy’s show to be atrocious and
Jimmy himself to be entirely devoid of humor. However, there the character is a
moment later proclaiming that he is going to produce the show anyway. Then the
audience is expected to believe that a traveling theater group whose performances
were so loathed that its audience was on their way out the door even before the
curtain could begin raising for the curtain call would suddenly command a
packed audience on opening night. Perhaps their reputation hadn’t preceded
them, but it’s not likely.

Of course, this couldn’t be a Buster Keaton
film without there being a love interest, so the film introduces us to Pansy
Peets (Ruth Selwyn), a dancer whose style is circa 1850. The two meet when she
literally runs into him while traveling to her next gig. Potts is smitten
instantly. One would expect therefore for Potts and Pansy (which I just
realized sounds a lot like pots and pans)
to be given significant screen time together to establish their emotional
connection, yet the screenwriter elects to keep them apart, instead introducing
a rival for the professor’s affection, a former speakeasy dancer named Eleanor
Espere (Thelma Todd). Eleanor is the bad girl. How do we know? She’s willing to
strip down to her black negligee during her “audition.” Needless to say, she
gets the part.

As a Pre-code film, Speak Easily has more than its fair share of risqué moments, from
the professor’s unintended double entendres to Eleanor’s intended ones. There’s
also a scene in which the professor finds himself in the ladies’ changing room
and one in which he and Eleanor strip down to their evening wear (separately,
of course). Yet the film lacks a narrative that would make the jokes
worthwhile; instead, they are in service of a story that starts on the wrong
foot and never finds a suitable rhythm, an even more egregious crime for a
musical.

Two things are at the core of the film’s
failure. First is the role of the professor. As written, the professor is
either the most socially inept person you’ll ever meet or an undiagnosed
sufferer of Asperger’s Syndrome, for he has never heard a sarcastic or
idiomatic expression that he understood. This starts out mildly amusing, yet
soon wears on you the way that a soft, high-pitch sound eventually become so
invasive that it drowns out all other sounds and gives you a throbbing headache.
And because Potts never picks up on anyone’s advances, he is unable to do much
to develop a relationship with Pansy. He’s something out of a British romance,
only he’s the character being forced upon the heroine by a greedy parent.

And it goes without saying that the film is
not consistent when it comes to the quality of the show finally put on on a
Broadway stage. No, instead of stinking to high heaven, like the performance
presented towards the beginning of the film, the cast is suddenly immensely
talented, precise in their timing, and utterly embraced by the crowd. The jokes
that fell flat earlier in the film abruptly work, the dancing that was earlier
criticized is met with thunderous applause, and jokes that are still not funny
miraculously begin tickling funny bones everywhere. It’s as if we’ve entered a Bizarro
world where up is down and the unamusing is uproarious. Oh, and nothing that
goes wrong ever has a consequence. Mistakes equal hits.

One day a film will be made in which a dud
remains a dud, a critic doesn’t suddenly become a fan, and bad jokes are consistently
met with groans and stunned silence, regardless of when they are said in the
picture. Speak Easily is not this
film. Instead, it’s a film that starts D.O.A. and only shows intermittent flickers
of life. It is failed by a lackluster script and a lead role that is not written
to the strength of the superstar playing it. Sadly, this is easily one of
Buster Keaton’s worst films. (on DVD from Warner Archives)